Such Little Words that Changed the World
by PikaCheeka
Summary: Nine moments in the lives of Hashirama and Madara when a few simple words changed the course of history, portraying the eternity of heroes. Mild HashiMada,. Pre-618 spoilers.


Author's Note: I have long had an epic Founding Era fic in the works, but it has spent about three years in the outline stage, just stagnating while I struggled with massive writer's block that I still haven't really recovered from. Recent events in the manga (chapter 618 has just been released) have kick-started me into trying to get something out though, as I would like to get at least some of my headcanon out before there is actually an official story about this time period. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to turn my outlines into the 200+ page fic I was planning, and as I am leery of writing AUs, it may never happen unless Kishi keeps the history very vague or saves it for another time. Nonetheless, here are some writer'-block-crushed scraps! Nine inter-related stories involving nine simple statements that changed the course of the world. Covers their first meeting to the Valley of the End and beyond. The last part rather involved my "theories" as to how the manga as a whole will end. Rated T for violence, implications of HashiMada.

Dedicated to coincident, who to this day remains my favorite HashiMada author (and I don't expect this to change anytime soon). She is an amazingly talented author and truly helped me develop my Founding Era headcanon to what it is today.

**Such Little Words that Changed the World**

**By PikaCheeka**

_Here is the fine shape of eternal youth and virginal desire which makes heroes. That makes the doings of heroes border so close upon the unbelievable that it is no wonder their doings must emerge now and then like gunflashes in the smoke, and that in their very physical passing becomes rumor with 1000 faces before breath is out of them, lest paradoxical truth outrage itself._

- William Faulkner

First Meeting

Since he first saw the masked Uchiha sweep into the meeting hall with a dead-eyes and wild-haired waif behind him, shaking and with the feathers of crows pressed to his scalp as if he had just crawled forth from some bizarre mountain ceremony, he knew his life was over.

He'd never forget the first time they'd truly acknowledged one another, when the man in the mask, who Hashirama later learned was his father, suddenly and viciously grabbed Madara by the face and thrust him in front of the daimyo, saying this was the boy who was born with a fully-developed sharingan, the boy who would be the second coming of the sage himself. Hashirama had caught his eye then, wide and red between the claws on his father's glove, and seen the fear then. It was the first of two times he would ever see such a look in his eyes; it took Hashirama over twenty years to learn that the fear was not due to his father and the madness he spoke, not due to the daimyo's hard look, not due to anything other than the simple fact that he had seen and inexplicably understood the Senju boy sitting across the room before him. And then it was past, a moment not to be repeated for years to come, but one he would remember until his death in all its transience.

He himself was introduced to the daimyo as the boy with the ability to create life, the boy who could touch the edge of a barren field and cause it to bring forth enough grain for a village in a matter of seconds, the boy who could create forests at will and order a tree to become a house. But his father failed to speak of his coldness, his terrible politeness and magnanimity that masked an emptiness. It was an emptiness that spoke of Hashirama's ability to thrive on the battlefield just as easily as all that he touched could thrive. His chakra was so violently full of life that it took everything from him, that it left him marveling at death and fascinated at his own ability to take it just as easily as he could give it. It was an emptiness he could never speak of, never show to anyone but the sunken-eyed boy across the room, who emanated not only fear but a cold and vicious cruelty, a lust for power and death that was already far too apparent in a boy so young. Because the entire time his father spoke of him, he felt those eyes, and he felt an increasing sense of embarrassment. The Uchiha boy sounded like nothing, as his father had only spoken of a freak occurrence and a twisted fantasy.

Then his father had leaned over him and whispered in a calm manner that it was best to kill him soon, when they were both young, before he had fully mastered his eyes. Hashirama made no response, because this he knew. It was all he was in the end, the heir of the clan, a clan of mercenaries and murderers who masqueraded themselves as superior to others because of their heritage under the sage's one true son. They were not Uchiha, the inferior, those even worse than the clans who were not related to the sage at all. They did not live in mountains and erect shrines dedicated to demons and birds. They did not have a kekkei genkai that only gained power when excruciating pain was felt. And they did not wear masks. They played the game and hid their true selves, but they did not make a showing of this. They pretended they had nothing to hide, while the Uchiha, with their clan head nothing short of a masked monster, made it all too clear who and what they were.

When he had turned from his father, not answering, he again caught the eye of Madara, and this time looked away, ashamed. Because he knew that Madara had heard the entire exchange, but his blank stare revealed nothing and somehow that saddened Hashirama.

As they left the hall he glanced at him again, wondering for a moment if Madara, too, had been told to kill him, wondering if he would try, and what would happen if such a thing were to come about. Hashirama knew that if it came to it, if he was forced to make a decision, he would kill him. He meant nothing to him, just another soul that was probably not a soul to obliterate, another body to leave on the blood-soaked battlefield to be picked up, or perhaps not picked up, by a clan member who found it in their heart to care for another dead child.

But Madara smiled then, the lids of his eyes lowering and a corner of his mouth turning upwards, and Hashirama was not so sure then. He would never be sure again, because Madara had smiled first.

The bitter ringing in his ears that would ever remind him of who he was, what he was. He was nothing to the Senju. A killing machine born and bred. The Senju had not made him who he was; he was only the embodiment of the sordid viciousness of a clan that hid emptiness behind warmth. He knew in that moment without knowing that Madara's father had said no such thing to his son, because Madara's father was not his father. He was the despised, the outcast, the heir of the elder son who was doomed to fail for all eternity. He was allowed to make mistakes, to change his mind, to do as he pleased, and that was why Madara had feared. That was why Madara had smiled. Hashirama felt his father's hand on his shoulder as he steered him away, the words hanging between them that he would never recover from, that he would never forgive.

"That thing is a monster, no different from his father._ Hashirama, you were raised to kill him, and you will_."

First Fight

Their first fight was an abrupt and unexpected one, a glorious flash of brilliance in the night that ended as soon as it had begun, but carried with it the fate of the world. They were young, and in their youth already the greatest heroes the world had ever known, though no one knew it yet, doomed to immortality despite never living but for in battle.

He laughed through much of the fight, swinging his gunbai and his scythe as if they were merely one long weapon that he was the hinge of, lunging forth from his own fire to gouge the other boy's armor, cleanly sever a lock of hair. He was careful not to hurt him, not yet. He didn't want the dance to end so early, and so he waited, circling Hashirama like a vulture, uncaring about everything around him. This was the fight he had longed for, six long years now. Clan skirmishes were not enough. This was truly living, alone against his rival, who he had perhaps forced himself upon but that mattered little.

The Senju's power intoxicated him. It was all he could do not to be lured in by it, to allow himself to become distracted. Hashirama radiated power and strength. His chakra was pure life form. With a single seal he could bring the very ground beneath him to live, erupting forward with monstrous creatures made of fibrous cords and vines, and not once during that first battle did he touch his scroll, something that drove Madara into a frenzy. He was better than that. He deserved to see that. Hashirama taunted him with everything he had, everything he would not reveal. He openly praised his opponent more than once, something that further enraged and delighted Madara. He had been praised his entire life, praised and feared, but never by anyone so worthy as the young man before him; recognition only mattered when it was granted by an equal, and Hashirama was his only equal in the world. Perhaps even his superior, but that was something he violently fought against in his own mind.

Madara had always been one of little emotion, only driven to excitement by fighting, by experiencing the madness and chaos of the battlefield and the adrenaline that came with it. Power enthralled him, and having grown up waging nothing but warfare, at the age of fifteen he was already equating it with every primitive and positive emotion that existed. He was not like those foul soldiers who were so aroused in battle they would slouch off alone after the slaughter, no. He was better than them. He cared nothing for such things. His obsession was even more primitive, but it was also rapidly becoming a boring one as he desperately grabbed onto things that were never there. He was alone at the top. It was only then, in his first fight against Hashirama, that he realized he was not so alone, and he would never be so again. Here he had found his rival, though he had always known it; they were inseparable unto death, which could only be granted by the other. It wasn't only a need either. It was a desire. He didn't only need this on a primal level any longer. He _wanted_.

And somewhere during the midst of the battle, when he swung his scythe and it caught Hashirama's armor near his shoulder, shearing it in two and slicing into his chest, he felt fear. It could not end this soon. Hashirama was all he had, all he would ever have. He was the only one who had ever made him feel alive, who fulfilled his lust for power and dominance. They leapt away from one another, Madara moving just as fast as the wounded, and he carried on, pretending it had never happened. He could not let him know and had to allow himself to forget that moment of mutual weakness.

Madara hadn't expected it to end like this, so soon, within a single fight. He had studied the other boy for years, watching his every move in battle from afar, absorbing everything with his sharingan and storing it away to turn it over obsessively, again and again, when he was alone. He thought he knew his every move, his every turn. Even thougth the fight had begun to turn badly and he realized with shock that perhaps he was out of his league, he still made himself believe he could defeat him. So when the mokuton sprung forth from the ground, snapping his arm and grabbing his neck so to force him from even sitting upright again, it was not pain or fear that made him cry out but rage.

"You had the chance to land a killing blow in this fight, but you did not. I won't kill you now."

He felt the ringing of a sword returning to its sheath and his sharingan flared up again, if only for a moment, as he struggled to comprehend what was being said to him. This was not mercy. This was cruelty, and he said as such, choking not only on blood but on words. "Why?"

"For what you could be." And Hashirama turned his back on him, definitively, slowly, showing him that he was not afraid, that he knew Madara would not kill him though he easily could, that he knew and did not deny what was already there and what had always been there. Denying was only for Madara.

His brother was there for him, patiently waiting to heal and bind his wounds, to comfort his broken pride and his rage, to remind him that all, the Senju was not his whole world. Madara was slow to learn healing jutsu. Pain meant little to him, and he knew he had Izuna, his placid and unwavering brother who loved him more than life itself and who, because of that, would fall, though Madara was not to know this. Madara was not ever to know this, for blindness was never something he recovered from.

"It isn't wise to hate someone like him. You are meant to kill him, not hate him, brother." Izuna said calmly, always calmly, a haunting voice in the back of Madara's mind that forever reminded him of things he did not want to think about.

"It isn't hate," he snapped impatiently. Hashirama wasn't worth hatred.

His brother studied him a moment. He sighed. He stood, and only when he left did Madara feel his fists unclenching.

He waited until nobody was there to hear him. There was no reason to speak it, not when alone, but he had to reaffirm it, to feel the words and accept what he knew he would never be able to accept, what would kill him more than any wound inflicted on the field. "_It's love_."

Izuna

Hashirama did not know when or how he fell. He only remembered the sudden flash of horror across his opponent's face that was not for him, and suddenly Madara was gone, vanished faster than he had ever seen him move. He did not know how he knew, but suspected it came down to their eyes; all things came down to the eyes, even if the younger brother no longer had any.

He did not chase him, only found himself crying for his men to fall back, that the enemy had been defeated for the time being. There was no need to kill a defeated man. He witnessed the looks of confusion on the Uchiha as they heard their enemy say they themselves had been defeated, and Hashirama realized with sadness that they did not even know yet.

Uchiha Izuna was dead, and with him a part of their leader was gone forever.

For a terrible moment he suddenly thought of his own younger brother; where was Tobirama? He found himself running through the field, calling for him, sending Sarutobi and Danzou off to find him with a single harsh command. Madara was everything to him, but somehow that rendered Tobirama no less than that. He did not think he could live without him. When the younger Senju approached him, approaching from a part of the grounds that had been dominated by the Uchiha, Hashirama hugged him. He did not care about, but did not fail to notice, the blood on his brother's sword that he was so quickly wiping off. As if it was something to be ashamed of.

It was only after his brother's safety had been secure that he turned, spoke softly to Sarutobi that he would be back momentarily, and said nothing to his brother. He knew, somehow, that he could not trust him, though he would never allow it to change anything. Now was not the time. There would never be a time.

He found him on a small rise, surrounded by bodies but only focusing on one. Madara had never looked so frail, so pathetic, and Hashirama was suddenly, painfully aware of how small Madara was, how all of his fluidity in battle was a result of an underfed and sickened body, a haunted mind that would never let him rest. He found himself wanting to reach out to him, but instead kept his distance.

"I called off my men."

Madara did not respond, only continued to crouch over his brother's body. Though Hashirama could not hear him, he knew he was weeping.

"I may have called them off, but that will not stop a straggler from killing you from behind as you sit here, vulnerable."

There was only silence.

Hashirama grabbed his shoulder roughly and turned him around, ignoring the shock on the younger man's face and the blood streaming from his eyes. He had never gotten used to those eyes. "Do you not understand what I just did for you? What I meant when I said that you are still vulnerable here? What must I do? Drag you back to the encampment by force?"

"You didn't need to do anything."

"Your life is not your own," the older man said viciously, making Madara flinch and unconsciously activate his sharingan. No. Izuna's sharingan.

"It's no one's," he hissed, reaching down to touch his brother's face. Izuna was all he had ever had, because he could only allow himself to live for Izuna. He could not say he was dead, was not ready to accept that yet, but the Senju understood.

Hashirama studied him a moment before shoving him back and standing. "_Not while I'm alive_."

Treaty

Madara looked at the scroll for a long moment, his eyes moving in every direction, struggling to find characters he understood. Because while he could read the words, they would not process. They were merely drips of ink on an expanse of parchment, forming patterns but meaning nothing, for they could not possibly mean anything. The words he was not fast enough to skim over could not be what they appeared to be.

The Senju gave the younger man a moment to get his bearings before clearing his throat and suggesting that perhaps, his handwriting was poor, and it would be best if he read it aloud, as only he could easily decipher his scrawl. He was met with a snarl, but one with a flicker of relief behind it. "So you can neglect to mention key things? No. Hikaku, please." He shoved the scroll at his retainer and slouched back, eyes burning with a fully activated sharingan. The warning in his voice was sharp enough to make Hashirama consider drawing back.

The Uchiha read through the treaty, smoothly picking up every word, yet finding a way to make it look casual, non-committal, and impermanent. It helped that he would occasionally narrow his eyes, pretend a word was difficult to read. Madara and Hashirama studied one another intently as the truth came forward, Hashirama never quite sure if Madara was really so obstinate, or if he simply could not read. He would never know; all he knew was that peace was something incomprehensible to the Uchiha. The treaty was a straight-forward one, with little room for loopholes, not because Hashirama wanted to make Madara feel comfortable, but because he feared Madara would find a way around them.

"When do you need an answer?" Madara asked sharply, before the final words had even had time to settle with the dust in the old meeting hall, mingling with eternity.

"Ten days, and you are free to hold council whenever you like during that time. Until then, we have a cease-fire."

Sudden exhaustion overtook Madara and he nodded slowly. The clan would want peace, that he knew, but it was something he was unwilling to give. It was not only because Izuna had died. It was because in all his perverse adoration of the man standing before him, he could not bring himself to be his partner, for he feared what may come of it. When such adoration bordered on idolatry, the object of affection became untouchable and despised.

As he swept from the room, he leaned towards the Senju long enough for him to tense up and reach for his sword. He did nothing though, only hissed out a short, "As if you would pen your own treaty. Don't patronize me," before storming from the room.

"So we would never fight again."

Hashirama shifted. "No. We would unite our clans and subdue all others beneath us, eventually forming one immense army."

"And what would be the point? Who would we fight thereafter?"

"I wasn't aware we needed to fight."

Madara let out a low hiss and fell silent.

"Once all clans are subdued, we would form a village. Divide the clans. I have proposed that each country gets a shinobi village of its own. There will always be the possibility of war, but if each daimyo were to have its own stable army to defend its country, I believe some of the animosity would subside.

Madara laughed bitterly. "You think granting countries armies will deter war."

"The daimyos agreed."

"You spoke with them already? You fed them this insipid, childish fantasy of yours and they believed it, or did they laugh and mock you and you just refuse to believe that you might be wrong? Perhaps they only agreed for monetary purposes, but inwardly they find you to be nothing more than a coward and a fool. I never suspected you to fall so low."

Hashirama smiled faintly. "I told them I would only do it with your clan alongside the Senju, as our equal."

Madara froze, suddenly unable to speak, not even to viciously mock and rant, as he had been doing all along. The Senju had assumed he would sign it, hadn't even asked him before telling the leaders of the world that he planned on becoming his partner. Such arrogance and foolishness astounded him. But there was no need to say it; he could tell from the expression on Hashirama's face that he knew he had just passed into dangerous territory. "Your equal."

"_Nothing less_."

The furiousness in Madara's eyes caused Hashirama to make a rapid retreat, but the Uchiha had not been fast enough to conceal the pain the older man had seen. Madara knew this, and inwardly cursed himself for allowing himself to be so weak.

He lived the next days in silence, avoiding even his own elders, abandoning the Uchiha clan quarters for the mountains with nothing and no one but his hawks. This was the end, the fall that had to come with all his pride, as inevitable as the sunset every day but something he nevertheless believed would never come. Hashirama had called him his equal. He had acknowledged him, and things could never be the same again. Everything he had worked for in life had come to a head and he found himself floundering in the dark, not knowing where to go any longer; all he knew was that there was a hand offered in the mirkiness and it was all he could do not to take it, not to learn to stand again with someone else by his side. Because after Izuna had died, he had sworn himself to solitude, had convinced himself it was all he ever needed.

When Hashirama approached him on the eighth day he did not retreat, only remained still beneath the shade of the wisteria tree, daring him to move into the darkness, to come close enough to whisper to him. There was no need to speak first. The Senju was one for words, which Madara despised. Times came though, when he was grateful for it, and this was no different.

"We can still fight. The two of us. Every day."

"Don't humor me," Madara spat, studying the face of the man before him. The face that had so destroyed him, with its dark impenetrable eyes that revealed so little of his emotions. Hashirama looked cruel at times, not nearly as much as his brother did, but enough that it startled Madara when he realized his own clan members did not see it. And he looked like that now, and Madara abruptly realized that this was not being said for him. "You need to fight me, too, don't you?"

"Yes."

The Uchiha laughed, reaching forward and twining his thin spider fingers into the older man's cloak. He pulled himself up against him, inadvertently pressing his body to him for the first time without armor and standing on his toes to whisper in his ear, "These will be no spars. I will fight to kill you."

"I would gladly kill you if I could." Hashirama pried his fingers off of him, but not without Madara noticing how long his own hands lingered. Madara never knew what made him say it, in the end, if it was the words or the touch. The promise of murder in such a cold voice, or the warmth of the other man's hands on his own. He always swore it was the words, that murder was all he had ever cared about and he would have signed anything if it only meant he could continue to clash against the one man he'd ever deemed worthy of his attention, but he remembered that other feeling until he died.

When Madara finally spoke, it was to give the words that would change the world. "_I'll sign_."

Abandonment

Konoha was a failure. Hashirama had known in his heart that perhaps it always would be, that forcing the hand of someone so feral as Madara, a creature born for the battlefield, could only end in sorrow. He was never meant to be tamed; he was not like the rest of them. He did not long for peace and better days. He only lusted for war, for the exhilaration and the life one felt in the face of death, and he existed only to die.

Konoha was founded on a lie, one leader destined to let the other down.

The other shinobi clans throughout the lands had easily been subdued, no match for the united front of Senju and Uchiha, for the ferocity that came with the gods and dragons the clan heads summoned down upon them. Hashirama could never admit that those months, stretching into nearly a year and a half, were the most glorious he had ever known. Such pure vicious and unadulterated domination of all other clans before them with the wraith-like Uchiha at his side enthralled him, in part due to his increasing infatuation with the ethereal monster that was Madara. When he no longer fought against him and instead fought with him, he was a new man, somehow even more dangerous, more angry and defensive and unforgiving, ripping shinobi apart with his bare hands and hacking their bodies apart before setting them on fire with a black blaze that deprived the dead of even a proper burial, were they ever to pose a danger to Hashirama. The Senju had never felt so secure as he did with Madara by his side, nor had he ever felt so uneasy. Because he knew Madara watched him when he slept, sharpened his weapons when they spoke alone together, leaned his thin body up against his too often for comfort, and lashed out at everyone, even Tobirama, who came too close.

It wasn't until nearly after a year after the treaty was signed when he realized that his unease came not only from the Uchiha, but also for him, when one day in the midst of battle against the dark-skinned men of the lightning country, he heard Madara give a sharp scream of pain and felt something inside of him break. Madara had saved his life countless times, and now when he was injured, probably dying, as he had never let forth such a cry before, he was not there. He grabbed his brother's arm, demanding that he help him find Madara, to heal him if he himself was not there in time, or at least protect him, and Tobirama obliged. Hashirama did not need to look far, the yin chakra emanating off the scarcely-formed Susano'o drawing him immediately to him, alone among the corpses. Hashirama had not known anyone could survive such wounds as the ones Madara wore that day, but consciousness reigned as he healed him, dark eyes watching him coldly.

Three days later, for the first time in his life, Madara donned armor, a suit similar to Hashirama's that would protect him from the only kind of suffering he knew how to handle.

When the age of conquering had passed and it was time to form the villages, Hashirama found himself spending even more time with the Uchiha, who proved to be even more brilliant than he had initially believed. He talked smoothly, clicking his tongue through a silky voice that calmed even the most irritable of men, and Hashirama began to feel a seething jealousy growing within him. He was the only equal Madara had ever had and ever would have, not these fools, and when he said as such Madara had only laughed, touched a finger to the Senju's mouth, and said "You are becoming like me. Let us fight now." And they fought again, daily taking to the woods and the fields and moving in for the kill for hours at a time, the burden of power gone if only for those few moments when one overtook the other. Madara was his freedom, his only chance to escape the drudgery and politics that came with an organized life, a stable life, and the new world the two of them were rapidly forming despite their mutual disgust for it.

They fought, and the world turned around them, Konoha growing slowly as a village, gaining ground as its own entity. Madara wrecked havoc at meetings, leaving the Senju to beg forgiveness over charred halls and beaten retainers more than once, but he was never angry at Madara for it; he secretly reveled in it. They were young, and though they had changed the world alone they felt they had their entire lives ahead of them, able to kill one another if the need ever arose or the temptation became too great, always living in slight tension but unable to bear being away from the other for very long. They alone did not understand what had happened between them.

Another year passed, and finally every last clan had made their formal alliance with a particular country, a particular village that Hashirama and Madara had organized with the daimyo of that land. The villages were run by a board of elders and clan heads, but Hashirama knew that would not last. No one trusted divided power; they would want a single man making the decisions, if only he were a figurehead for something far larger, and it was inevitable that Konoha would be the first village to make such a decision. After all, their people were entirely dominated by two men who made no secret of their obsessive, perverse hatred for one another, a hatred that was so all-consuming it prevented either one from being away from the other for any length of time.

When one of his elders finally spoke of it, he had thought he was prepared. "The people want a single leader. You know what that means. Senju or Uchiha.

"If you were to marry an Uchiha woman, this would solve the problem." The elder Sarutobi said calmly, lazily.

"I am not marrying for the sake of politics," Hashirama found himself snapping, not only angry at the thought that someone would dare suggest it, but angry at himself for catching onto the word Uchiha. He couldn't do that to Madara, not when he devoured so much of his time, not when the younger man had very nearly sacrificed all ties with his own people to be with him.

"Then the people will choose. Senju Hashirama or Uchiha Madara. Are you prepared to lead the village?"

"You speak as if the choice has already been made."

Sarutobi looked at him sadly. "You know it has. The Uchiha fear their own leader. His madness knows no bounds and he cannot be civilized like the rest of us. He would carry the world into war again if he could, simply because that is what he was born as. You tried to save him, but you couldn't. You never will."

Madara was not at the ceremony. Hashirama had not expected him to be, but it still left a painful ache in his chest. He had not wanted this seat, this title of hokage, not at the cost of Madara. The look of anguish and rage on the younger man's face when he had first heard the news was something that would never leave him. It was the breaking of Konoha, which had never meant to exist at all in the end, for Uchiha and Senju were never meant for anything beyond war. Madara knew this, and Madara did not hide from this. He should have been the leader, should always have been the leader. He should have burned the treaty with his flames and run Hashirama through with a sword years ago, but he had not. Something had happened, just as something would always happen.

He was therefore surprised to see him in the crowd towards the end of the ceremony, and he found himself abruptly standing, calling out, making some absurd statement about the union of clans, and how Madara would be his equal in everything but title. He did not look at Madara, felt no need to draw attention to him, but he was keenly aware of the look of confusion and pain in his red eyes. It wasn't until some time later when Hashirama realized what the look was. It had not been confusion at his words, but confusion at the relief and gratitude he had felt from them.

The people believed Konoha thrived. They knew that their hokage fought endlessly with the Uchiha head, which was no different than it had ever been, but they also knew that Madara no longer had as much power as he had once had, and therefore they felt safe. They did not know that Madara brutally attacked friends, allies, missionaries, and all who came in peace to Konoha, that he prowled the outskirts and descended upon anyone in a howling rage who spoke Hashirama's name. He had never killed anyone, honoring Hashirama's title only that much, but over a period of six months was able to utterly disgrace the name of Konoha throughout the lands. It was something Hashirama knew, but did nothing about. He could not confront Madara, because he knew why Madara was doing it.

It was only one day when Madara finally stormed into his office and ripped the Hokage hat from his head that Hashirama decided it was time to speak, though in the end he spoke the words he had not expected to ever be able to say.

"I will always be better than you," Madara snarled.

"No, you will always be my equal."

"Don't say things you don't believe. I know you. You already deem yourself superior. All because a rabble of pigs and cowards find you safe, too boring and too stupid to dare do anything to bring them to greatness." He was ranting, suddenly breaking for the first time since the treaty had been signed, and it was all Hashirama could do to let him. He took it, absorbing the tirade of vitriolic insults and hatred; only what it masked was what mattered to him. Because he knew in that moment what he had perhaps always known, he let Madara carry on. "I'm sick of all of this, sick of everything, sick of Konoha, the clans, the elders, the negotiations, the lies. And I'm sick of you." He crumpled down over the desk then, unable to hide the shaking of his shoulders. "I'm sick of you."

Hashirama was silent a long time. And when he stood and walked past Madara, he reached out and finally, after so many years, touched his back in sincere intimacy, and whispered, "Come to my room tonight."

Madara came, and they finally consummated what they had begun seventeen years ago. He gave himself so serenely and entirely and with such finality that it could only have been his swan song, though it was not to be understood by the older man until after Madara had left his life forever. Because Hashirama believed that moment was eternal, and that he could now live like this forever, with Madara by his side, though no one else need know of it. He believed everything was fated, that there was no difference between rivals and lovers, that simply because he and Madara were forever tied together, they would remain in such proximity as this until the end. He whispered as such in his ear, told him the three words that they had both shied away from for so many years, and Madara made some noncommittal noise that Hashirama took to mean agreement, though it could just have easily been denial.

When it was over he watched him sleep for a time before sliding down beside him. This was completion. What they had, had now come full circle, and Madara would never again be who he had once been. They would never again be what they had once been, because just as the world shifted, they too did. He wanted to speak, but was unable to, and instead only wrapped an arm around him, unintentionally awakening him.

Madara ignored the action and in a tired and sated tone, muttered out a "Tomorrow we're sparring."

He regretted saying the next words until his death, because with those few words he lost everything. "_We are not soldiers any longer, Madara_."

Valley of the End

"Want me to remove it? You'll…bleed out faster…"

Madara coughed again, covering Hashirama's already destroyed hand anew, and Hashirama realized that this was all he could do for him in the end. Make it fast, let his death be smooth now. Take his sword out and allow him to die, allow everything to end. He had been the one to do this, after all. But as he gripped the handle and slowly pulled out, seeking leverage, Madara grabbed his damaged hand with more force than he could have ever imagined a dying man to have. "No."

So he wanted the pain. "Want me to stay with you?" He wasn't expecting an answer. It had clearly taken all of Madara's strength, again ebbing away from his fingers, to give that single word. He only held the Uchiha as he crumpled against him, impaling himself still further on the sword but no longer caring, well beyond the threshold of pain. This was the sound of their ending, the drip of blood on the ground, the crackling of fire in the background, the low keening moan of the defeated monster Madara had brought with him, the shallow breathing of the dying. And he had done it all. He had driven Madara to the depths of his madness, driven him to such hatred and uncontrollable desolation that he had attacked Konoha.

When Madara had turned his back on the village once and for all after that night, Hashirama had let him go. He let himself be abandoned, and let Madara feel that he himself had been. It wasn't until months later when the anxiety began to crush him, and he sent out search parties to cover the lands, and for three long years he hunted Madara. He searched relentlessly, violating treaties, breaking borders, not caring for the cost as long as he were to find his own shadow again, for without Madara he was nothing. He could not rule Konoha without him. Madara completed everything he was, but could not allow himself to be; he was still that sunken-eyed boy across the meeting hall who had smiled at him first, who had openly and unabashedly, in all his self-deprecation and loathing, allowed Hashirama to be who he was.

He had never found him, only heard stories of a red-eyed wraith that had flickered too quickly through their country, asking questions of ghosts and gods and monsters, seething with loneliness and hatred and killing all who got in his way. The kages were suspicious, asking Hashirama if he was indeed Uchiha Madara, and why wasn't he with Konoha any longer, and why did he not kill him if he had gone rogue? Hashirama ignored them and moved on. The closest he had ever come was when he ran into a cold man, stitched together with dead green eyes, who had calmly told him he had traveled with Madara for a time to a shrine in the mountains far to the west of Konoha, but he had no reason to divulge any further information without sufficient pay. His further information was only that Hashirama would lose were he to meet Madara, and the Hokage had attacked him. And with bitterness, Hashirama returned home from that journey, realizing that for the first time, Madara had been within his grasp, but it had only ended in a battle with a stranger.

But what did Madara want? He poured over all of the legends he had heard over the years, summoning clan heads and elders, struggling to learn what it was that Madara so sought. It was only one day when Hikaku, the new Uchiha clan head, brought a chick from Madara's favorite hawk to Hashirama as a gift, that he realized. Madara's father and the words he had spoken so long ago. Madara was hunting down the Rikudou Sage. And he had no time to search himself, for only two weeks after he realized this, an entire district of the town was set aflame one night amidst the screaming roar of an immense beast. Madara had returned, striving to be the one thing that could make him greater than Hashirama. And he had come back to destroy the one thing that had ever threatened what was between them.

Konoha.

It was all Hashirama could do to steer Madara away from Konoha, though he eventually obliged after destroying nearly half of the village, and Madara lured him into a n immense plain far on the outskirts of the land. He rode a nine-tailed demon fox, the largest and most majestic creature Hashirama had ever seen, but it was a fox with the eyes of the Sharingan, controlled and in pain and clearly longing to kill the man who had captured him from the wilderness. It was a legend, the most dangerous of all the bijuu, and Hashirama knew that if he could not ensnare it, he would never reach Madara. He summoned a dozen creatures that night, sentient creatures he had created over the years with his mokuton that would loyally defend him to the end, only to be recreated, reborn, a thousand times. Because they needed to be, for even after the fox had been restrained, Madara had lunged forward with his Susano'o, a greater and more monstrous version of it than Hashirama had ever seen. He knew then that Madara had attained new heights of power that he would never know, but Madara lacked conviction. Madara was an angry child, lashing out at what had hurt him. He had nothing to win, no one to protect. He only wanted revenge, and then he would himself die.

The fight had gone on for nearly an hour, the landscape changing around them as moved, until finally both were too chakra-drained to do anything more than hand-to-hand combat. Madara had gained the upper-hand almost immediately, cleanly shearing two fingers from Hashirama's right hand with a scythe encased in black flames, a wound that no amount of chakra could ever heal. After that, Hashirama had not expected to win. He had not expected to kill him. No. This was just like all of their other fights over the years, vicious and deadly but in the end, harmless. They could never truly harm one another, so when he found his sword shoved to the hilt in Madara's chest he was unable to process what had happened, and he crumpled to his knees before him. Madara's sharingan suddenly spun backward a moment and begun to fade, and for the shortest of moments Hashirama prayed that it was an illusion, that Madara was not dying or, if he was, that Madara had forced him into it. But he would never know, as his chance to ask was already gone forever.

He crawled forward and asked, "Want me to remove it? You'll…bleed out faster…" He obeyed the refusal on Madara's part and instead asked if he might stay with him, and this Madara did not object to. He stroked his hair absently, touched his face, wiped the bloodstained tears from his eyes and pressed his forehead to the other man's. Madara startled him by cracking his eyes open a moment, now clouded and black, and giving the faintest of smiles. Because everything Hashirama had done then was what he had done that night so many years before, the night that at once completed and destroyed them, just as this one had, yet again. Madara made no distinction between love and death, and that was where their difference lay.

That was all he wanted, to feel that again, as he knew the rest could never come a second time, he only wanted that moment. Hashirama understood and whispered into his ear the same words he had spoken that night, and Madara suddenly rallied, pushing hard against Hashirama. "Go. Now."

The Senju hesitated.

"I don't want you to see…" he vomited blood again and clenched his fist tightly.

"Madara…" Hashirama started to speak, but the look on his rival's face stopped him. There was no refusing his final request. "I'm sorry."

"Leave me," Madara almost screamed behind him. And Hashirama left, turning his back on the only person he knew he could ever love, all because he could not watch him die by his hand, and because Madara did not want him to suffer for all eternity for it. Because that was all Madara could mean when he said that.

Madara watched him go, struggling to breathe, to survive long enough for the smoke of the battlefield to envelop him and make him lose sight of that back forever. He grunted in pain and grabbed the blade of the sword near his chest, setting it ablaze with Amaterasu, at once shattering the sword and partially cauterizing the wound long enough for him to do what he had to do to survive. He was dying, fast now, with his blood bubbling forth from his now-visible collapsed lung and crushed heart, but he knew he still had a few seconds. Long enough to finally unclench his fist and press the severed flesh of his rival deep into the wound. The effect was immediate, as he knew it would be. Blood would not have been enough. He needed flesh and bone to survive this, to become what he had to become to persevere. He felt the tissue reform with soft sucking sounds, the bones of his ribs and back snapping back into place, the muscle grow over the bones with an uncomfortable stretching sensation, and finally the warmth of fresh blood being rapidly produced. He would live for eternity, he would never stop hating, never stop longing for revenge. Because he could never forgive himself for loving, and he would carry part of Hashirama inside of him forever because of it.

He crumpled forward then, despising himself for the tears he felt. And he bitterly wondered why his eyes were not evolving one final time, as Uchiha eyes do, to compensate for all the pain he now felt and would carry until the end of time.

"_I don't want you to see…me betray you_."

Death of a Hokage

There was a sadness in Konoha after that day, and it was one that rapidly reached the political sphere and sunk the country into war. Hashirama returned from the battlefield crippled and distant. He had lost two fingers on his right hand, critical for seals, and when asked why he would not heal them, he simply said he could not. But Hashirama had never tried. He wanted them gone, wanted the phantom pain, because they reminded him of Madara and all that Madara had left him. Nothing but emptiness. He moved through the next decade of his life in a haze, marrying the Uzumaki girl who took on the kyuubi, raising children with her, and carrying on with his life without ever truly living it. He had died when Madara did, and the world moved around him as if he were in an eternal funeral.

When Kumo teamed up with the Mizukage and proposed war on Konoha, Hashirama sighed and agreed to the war as if it was nothing more than a game of shogi. He was approaching forty and already felt as if he had lived two lifetimes. One with Madara, and one without, and the one without, though shorter, was far too painful. He realized sadly as he signed the declaration that he cared little if he died during the war; his brother was eager to take his place as Hokage, so there was no reason for him not to lead the army into war. He was expendable, after all, now that his other half was gone.

He was dying, but he realized this only abstractly, and it mattered little to him. There was nothing for him any longer, nothing but the dull phantom pain on his right hand that had plagued him for nigh a decade now. It would be a relief to not feel it anymore. The shinobi who had run him through advanced wearily, uncertain as to why Hashirama was no longer fighting. He was a poor warrior, not recognizing death when he saw it. The Senju regretted for a moment dying to such a fool. He had been careless in this war, and perhaps he had sought death a bit too hard.

There was a momentary flash of light and a deafening roar, something Hashirama took to be nothing more than part of the dying process. But even in dying he felt the life chakra of a dozen men suddenly go out, and he recognized the chakra of a Susano'o, of that particular one, and he struggled to open his eyes. This was but a dream, but if only his last thought could be this, he could die in peace. If only.

His ragged hair cut just below his shoulders, his body even thinner and sicker than ever before, as he crouched down and gently cradled Hashirama. He was young again, ethereal in his beauty, and it wasn't until he smiled and turned off his Sharingan that the Senju truly saw him. No, he was not younger. They were the same. This was no ghost. Madara was alive. Madara, whose death had destroyed his life this last decade, had never died at all, and suddenly a great weight had been lifted from Hashirama's chest. He almost didn't notice Madara slowly raise the kunai to his throat and press it against the skin just below his ear.

"Forgive me," Madara whispered sadly, stroking his hair again. He didn't know what he was asking forgiveness for. The betrayal. The murder. The love. It didn't matter.

Hashirama caught his hand, felt it slip from his fingers almost immediately, and smiled weakly through the blood. "_I did thirty years ago_."

Obito

Hashirama lived two lifetimes, but Madara lived for an eternity. For generations he roamed the subterranean caves, hunting down esoteric clues about the Rikudou Sage, dabbling in science and jutsu he never believed he would touch, and desperately trying to forget. But he never could, and he could never let himself either, for when he killed Hashirama, he had filled a flask with his blood, and obsessively replicated it over the years. He told himself it was only because of his connection to the sage, but he knew himself better than that. He erected a living monument to him, born out of a mixture of their cells and of the roots of an immense tree that had long since toppled. He lived only to die, but unwilling to die without Hashirama doing the deed. His wound languished, causing him excruciating pain for his entire life and never developing into what he had believed it would. He had not thought about it at the Valley. He had only thought about surviving, enduring, living on for revenge; it was only after Hashirama died that he realized he had accomplished two goals in that moment, though neither, it seemed, ever came to fruition.

It was only when he was approaching death when his eyes changed, when he awoke screaming in pain and clutching at his face, blood pouring from his sunken sockets as his sharingan gave way to the rinnegan. He found himself alive again, more alive than he had ever been, but unable to live without Senju life constantly being pressed into his veins. He created the monstrous Gedo Mezo, following only what his eyes told him, then hooked himself up to it as if he were a parasitic god and sunk into the depths of oblivion, barely alive but unwilling to die, birthing monsters from hatred, clutching the weapon of his youth and longing for love and revenge for years.

When the young Uchiha fell into his cave, he considered simply watching him die, as he hadn't had entertainment in years, but when he remembered the monument to Hashirama he had, he immediately felt guilty and ordered his demonic creations to aid him. He was old, and movement was difficult for him, but he was able to save the boy by replacing his crushed parts and organs with those of a plant-like monster. He knew, as he rebuilt the boy, that he was now, in part, Hashirama, and he wondered absently what that made him.

His name was Obito, and Madara wished he had let him die almost immediately. He was loud, rude, ungrateful, shallow, naïve, and foolish. He knew nothing of the world, but believed that his friends still cared about him. He believed that the world would take him back, as failed and broken as he was, with no power and not even a true body any longer. He was a fool, in love with a silly girl who Madara knew within a sentence did not care for him. And he called Madara, on a regular basis, a god of death, which was perhaps the most frustrating of all. He was not a god but a ghost.

Madara was a ghost who knew the nature of the world. He had lived for eternities, and he knew that in the end, there was only pain and emptiness; all else was an illusion, because all else was transient. Love he felt may last forever, but when the object died, it turned cold, and nothing else was ever any different. He knew that with peace came war, and with love came hatred. He knew they could never exist without one another, and that if anything, it was always easier to go with war and hatred, as you had nothing to lose then. Better to thrive in the shadows than to be doomed to them, as he had been. Peace perhaps was necessary. Peace was what Hashirama had pretended to want, but at what cost could it come? Warfare, hatred, misunderstanding, mistrust, animosity, selfishness, and greed were all a part of humanity, and to deprive mankind of such things by enforcing peace upon him was to cripple him. Peace came at the cost of everything Madara had ever understood, and it left him with nothing but emotions that terrified him. When confronted with love, there was nothing one could do but to destroy it. Only under an illusion could he create peace. Only with the Mugen Tsukiyomi could he carry out what Hashirama had longed for, without destroying himself and everything they had been to do so. If they were both triumphant, then all that had torn them apart would be undone. For all their lives Hashirama had believed they were equals though they were never meant to be. The world had not allowed them to be.

Obito cared little for his ramblings; he had only promptly accused him of unusual activity and tendencies and pretended to ignore him. Madara considered killing him many times, but he could not. Because once, when Obito had sidled up to him to study the tubes hooked up his spine, he had seen the scar on his back, and he had asked what it was from. Madara had scowled and told him, saying perhaps more than he had intended to, but after all he had been alone for so long, and when it was over, Obito had smiled sadly at him and said, "Maybe the world did not deny you from anything. Maybe it was only your pride."

Obito was his heir. He was the closest he had ever had to a son, and his last hope, so he dealt with him, and quietly watched him grow. He waited for an opportune time to push him over the edge, and with his power above and below the ground he organized the death of the girl Obito most loved, and he was sure that Obito was there to witness it. He did not do it out of cruelty, at least he did not believe he did. He did it because he wanted Obito to see the truth of the world, and to gain the will to change it.

When Obito came back to him, broken and angry and hateful, he knew nothing of Madara's involvement. He would never know. He only cried out that he cared for nothing, and when he proclaimed that he would work with Madara to create a new world, one of illusions that did not pretend to be anything but, a world where the dead could return and they could be given a chance to start anew, Madara definitively moved towards the destruction of the known world.

"_You are the savior_."

The Stuff of Legends

When death came for Madara the second time, he was less prepared for it than he had been the first time. When he had killed himself sixteen years earlier, he had not ever truly expected his dreams to come to fruition, so when things had unexpectedly turned around and he'd found himself revived again earlier that day, his desperation to complete the plan was palpable. Obito was dead, having sacrificed himself for the Alliance, but in doing so accidentally bringing Madara back to mortality so that he could become the Juubi's Jinnchuuriki. Obito had failed him in the end, but it mattered little now, not when he was so close.

The Uzumaki jinnchuuriki was a bother, but he mattered little. It was the Uchiha boy who made him uneasy, a perfect replica of his own youth, but so much colder and dead-eyed. The Uchiha boy who had descended upon the battlefield in a flash of lightening and calmly informed his ancestor that he was dead, that he could only be destroyed by the dead, and that he and his friend would withdraw when the time came. And they had fought. Uchiha Madara against the last known ancestors of the Uchiha and perhaps even the Uzumaki lines. He had already killed the last Senju, relishing in the knowledge that finally, the seed of Hashirama was extinguished forever, and all that remained was what coursed through his blood. There was an exhilaration that Madara hadn't felt in lifetimes, and it was not only because he was fighting, it was not only the power of the bijuu. It was watching the two boys work together. He heard their names at times over the clash of the war.

Uchiha Sasuke. Uzumaki Naruto. They were akin to Madara and Hashirama, and while generations of placidity had dumbed down the shinobi world, rendering their relationship not nearly as over-powering and all-consuming as that which Madara had, it was enough for him to appreciate them, to hesitate when he had a chance to kill one, to dodge and evade far more than necessary simply to watch them work together, the Uzumaki loud and easily frustrated while the Uchiha deadly and silent. They were nothing like what he knew, and at once everything he knew, and he found himself falling a little in love. Even if the world had fallen so low as this, such rivalry could reign supreme, and perhaps it would not carry on to destroy both involved, exactly because it was not so all-consuming, because they were able to carry on their lives beyond the violence of the eternal moment when they realized, back to back against the enemy, that there was no such thing as a hero without a shadow behind him.

Madara felt his conviction failing in that same moment, because he saw then what he had always had, and what he had simply failed to see. No. Refused to see. Because Obito had been right.

He was not in Hashirama's shadow. He had never been in it. No, he was his shadow, his equal, the support behind his back, the one who could see into the darkness and protect him from what he could not understand. Heroes came in pairs, and everything he had ever believed, everything he had told Obito, was wrong. What was in shadow would always pass into light in this world, because one made the other. When his conviction failed him, he allowed himself to be overtaken. He dropped his defense and laughed not in bitterness but in triumph when he felt the raiton-charged sword, infused with kyuubi chakra so to nullify any possibility of him healing himself with the juubi, slice him apart. The dark boy had taken it. He would not let the other hero commit such cruelty, for there was no need to. Sasuke was the shadow that the light could not live without. He was the boy who severed his last familial tie for the sake of the world, something he was painfully aware of when he met Madara's eyes in that moment. And then he muttered something in his ear, too low to hear, and the two boys leapt back and turned away from him while Madara sunk slowly to the ground.

Madara understood the words of the Uchiha boy before he saw him. He faintly heard the astonished cries of the Alliance and the choked cry of joy from a boy whose father had died sixteen years before, but he ignored all of those things. He was prepared for it, and when he heard footsteps approaching he forced himself to crouch, so to at least see him eye to eye.

"Hashirama," he breathed, "You came back."

"Unintentionally. Not like how you allowed yourself to be killed there." The Senju hadn't changed. He was still painfully frustrating, and Madara loved him for it. "Why did you do that?"

He groaned faintly and pressed the side of his face against the other man's arm. "Because I…" he trailed off a moment, so very aware that the world had a chance to repeat itself again here. But he wouldn't let it, and instead finished, "understand now." He silently begged Hashirama to not speak of it any longer, to not remind him of his folly, to simply continue to hold him.

"Tobirama's letting us go the moment you die. I'll be here until then."

"And after." Madara said sharply, surprised that he was able to sound so angry while rapidly bleeding out.

Hashirama nodded slowly. "When I died, you asked if I forgave you. Now may I ask you the same?"

"No." He hesitated a moment. "Yes."

Hashirama pressed his hand against Madara's wound and felt the slow, sucking pulse that came when a man had moments to live. Here he had been given another chance, and there had not been time. He wanted to tell him everything he had ever felt from since that moment in the meeting hall so long ago. How Madara had changed the world that day with a simple smile, how he had despised himself and the coldness within him before then, how the Uchiha completed and perfected him in ways he could not possibly describe, how with him he had felt the paradoxical edges of eternity and had known that that was all there was for them. Because he knew they were only ever vibrant flashes in the smoke, finding one another if only for a moment in an endless series of moments, converging, and despite all that stood against them, living on as echoes until the end of time. There was no need to say anything. When he met Madara's eyes again he knew it was the same. They had never been any different, in the end. "Is there…"

And so Madara finally told him what he had always wanted. "_Die with me_."


End file.
